Lift the Weight
by heavenlyshadows
Summary: Somehow losing Peter the second time was so much harder than the first. Companion to Holding On and Letting Go


Five months after Spider-Man's death, a memorial was built for him in Central Park. Tony didn't go to the unveiling.

He should have but he couldn't.

Happy had gone, as a representative for Stark Industries, and had told him all about it. It was a nice sentiment; a metal statue of Spider-Man above a plaque that read;

_In loving memory of Spider-Man_

_Earth's Greatest Hero_

There had been a similar one built for Natasha a few months prior. Tony had been at that unveiling. Mourning her was easier for some reason.

"What did May think?" Tony asked Happy when he walked through the Tower door later. He had bought the building back after the compound had been destroyed. Unpacked all the boxes, turned on the lights, tried to move forward. At least that's what he told himself.

"You would know if you talked to her." Tony winced, though the tight anger in his friend's voice wasn't misplaced. Things had been strained between them since the kid's death, which was true of pretty much everyone with Tony these days. The only thing that had gotten better was his ability to push people away. He had certainly done a good job of it with May Parker. He hadn't talked to, much less seen her in months.

_God, you would be so disappointed in me kid._

She had come to see her nephew at a private medical facility not far from the Tower when it was all over. When his eyes had long since lost their life and his body had begun to go cold. Tony wasn't sure who had called her. Happy? Pepper? He didn't know, didn't care. All he cared about was the kid. His kid. His kid who he had lost again. Somehow losing him the second time was so much harder than the first. And despite knowing that he was gone, Tony still held him. Held him until Rhodey had to physically drag him away. "He's gone, man. Let him go."

It was the first time Tony had ever punched him sober.

Because Peter couldn't be gone.

Tony wasn't ready for Peter to be _gone._

He had expected May to be angry with him, had expected her to scream and curse when he told her that her nephew's final thoughts had been of her.

He almost wished she had. A furious reaction was better than the heartbroken one he got. Her eyes, her dark brown eyes that reminded him so much of the kids, had filled with tears and she'd closed them, taking a deep breath as she bit down on her lip so hard it turned white. "Thank you." was all she said.

_Thank you for telling me._

_Thank you for loving him._

_Thank you for not letting him die alone._

It wasn't until after he left the room that he could hear her sobbing.

"She wasn't there." Happy said now, refusing to meet Tony's eyes. "She's in London, staying with a friend." He looked up after a moment, still not at Tony but somewhere slightly to the left. "It's too hard for her to be here right now." Tony understood that more than he cared to admit.

"MJ and Ned were there though."

Hearing that the kid's friends had been at the unveiling was a more forceful punch to Tony's solar plexus than hearing that his aunt hadn't been. They had shown up at the medical facility sometime after May but Tony hadn't seen them. He couldn't bear it because how do you tell a sixteen-year-old that his best friend is never coming home? How do you tell a junior in high school that the boy she's been dating for less than a year is dead? That she's a widow before she's ever been married before she's even had a chance to think about it?

You don't, so Tony didn't.

He didn't speak to them at the funeral a week later either, but he saw them. They were different. There was a heavy set to their shoulders as if they carried the weight of the world on them. Neither of them cried but he could plainly read the grief on their faces, see too clearly the life that wasn't in their eyes anymore. Ned, who would have once nearly keeled over and died at the thought of being surrounded by Avengers, didn't spare any of them more than a glance because none of them were the Avenger he wanted to see.

They were polite enough, smiling when people came forward and shook their hands, offering condolences but it never reached their eyes. And when it was just the two of them standing by the grave where their best friend was buried beside his uncle and his parents, when they thought nobody was watching, they let the facade slip. They were too young to have to do this, Tony had thought. Sixteen was too young to have to bury someone you loved.

_Sixteen was too young for you to die._

"Tony," Happy's sharp reprimand broke him out of his thoughts. " You're going to have to talk to someone eventually."

"I don't have to do anything." Tony snapped.

"Hey don't get pissed at me I'm just trying to help you."

"Yeah well, you're not!"

Happy's jaw clenched, his hands balling into fists and Tony didn't think he had ever seen his friend so angry. "You know what's helping Tony? When was the last time you slept, or ate, or went home?" He stepped closer so that his face was just inches away from Tonys. "Peter died so that you could have a chance to live so that we all could and the way you're acting is a disgrace to his memory."

Tony's mouth fell open. He didn't know what to say.

What could he say when he knew Happy was right?

He couldn't say anything. So he left.

After he left the tower, Tony's feet took him to Queens.

Pop up memorials for Spider-Man had sprung up all over the world. He knew there was nowhere he could go where he wouldn't see the telltale blue and red of the kid's suit spray-painted on a brick wall or the comically wide eyes of his mask plastered to a haphazard mess of cardboard on the sidewalk. But Queens was the worst. Because not only were there memorials for Spider-Man in Queens, there were memorials for Peter Parker.

It was easy for him to be angry everywhere else, easy for him to hate the fact that they only mourned Spider-Man and couldn't even begin to comprehend the loss of Peter Parker. In Queens, it wasn't just the hero but the kid that was behind the mask that was missed.

Midtown had one just outside the front doors of the school. Peter hadn't been the only face there in the last five years but now his picture stood alone, covered in flowers and notes of farewell. His Academic Decathlon jacket was folded neatly on the ground in the middle of it all.

Delmar's bodega had a photo of him on their counter, proclaiming the number five the 'Parker Special.'

_You were more important to them than you ever knew._

_They'll never know that Spider-Man was a kid from Queens._

_And you were a hero to them anyway. _

Soon he found himself on the same street the kid's apartment was on. He was halfway up the stairs before he remembered. Even if he knocked on the door, no one would answer it. Even if someone did, it wouldn't be the Parkers. May wasn't in the country anymore and Peter….

Peter was gone.

Someone had told him once that there were five stages of grief. He had gone through three of the five pretty quickly. Anger first which had then elapsed into days of depression. Days of refusing to leave his room or see anyone, holding the kid's Midtown sweatshirt close to his chest as he cried.

And cried.

And cried.

Until the day he found out Steve was sending the stones back. He had run from his room and begged Bruce to send him instead, to give him one more chance to save his kid. All he wanted was one more. One more hug, one more laugh, one more look. Just one more. He didn't think it was too much to ask.

But Bruce had just shaken his head, looking at him with the same expression Tony imagined Thor had seen on his face just a few days before when he had told him it couldn't be him who snapped his fingers.

Steve had left and when he returned less than two minutes later a gray weathered old man, the anger had returned with him. "How is it fair?" Tony had asked him. "How is it any kind of fucking fair that you get to go and get your happily ever after when a sixteen-year-old is dead?" Steve had barely reacted to Tony's rage, had barely flinched when the inventor had pointed an accusing finger in his face and screamed till his blood seemed to boil. "It isn't about fair Tony." His voice was calm. "Of course it's not about fair when you were the one who got to make the choice." Tony scoffed.

"Peter made his choice too."

In that instant, Tony's anger fizzled out like water over a fire.

"Peter made his choice," Steve repeated. "And he died a hero because of it. Using the stones to bring him back would take his choice away. And it dooms the people in that Peters timeline. You can't sit here and tell me that you would be ok with being a part of that."

_A part of me was kid. A part of me was ok with letting all of that happen just so I could have you back._

_You'd never forgive me if I had._

Anger.

Depression.

Bargaining.

Tony went through all of those stages pretty quickly.

It was the acceptance that was the hardest part. It was because denial always sat somewhere in his brain, overshadowing his every logical thought, convincing him that they had been able to bring Peter back once before, surely they could do it again. They were the Avengers. They had done the impossible.

_You did the impossible._

"Hey."

Happy stood on the steps where Tony sat, gazing down at him with a sad sort of smile. Tony wasn't sure where he had come from and he blinked once, twice, sure that if he did it enough Happy would disappear like a mirage. He didn't.

"How did you-?"

The bodyguard held up his phone and Tony could see the FRIDAY app he had installed lit on the screen. "Traitor." He muttered under his breath. After a long moment, Happy sat down beside him and sighed. "I'm sorry Tony. I had no right to say what I said about- I'm just sorry."

"You weren't wrong though. I'm not doing right by him, not at all." He rubbed his hands up and down his legs, goosebumps spreading over his skin with the chill that had started to creep into the air. "It's just- god it's so fucking hard. Everywhere I go, I see his face. I just really miss him."

Happy's lips were pinched into a tight line. "Yeah, I miss him too. The kid was a pain in my ass but-"

"You're preaching to the choir Hap."

That seemed to startle a laugh out of him, seemed to lift a bit of the weight that had been too heavy for either of them to hold in the past couple of months, and for a moment, just a moment, Tony thought that final stage of grief he hadn't been able to reach would finally be achievable. Acceptance.

_No,_ he thought. He would never be able to accept it, not fully. The Peter Parker shaped hole he had cut into his life made sure of that but he would get better. He owed it to the kid to get better.

And he did.

A year passed.

Then two.

Then five.

And the weight got easier to lift.


End file.
